Key Concept

SAP Supplier Lifecycle Management (SAP SLC) is a system designed to enhance the management of supplier-related business scenarios – Supplier Registration, Supplier Master Data Management, Supplier Qualification, Supplier Evaluation, and Supplier Portfolio Management. The application can be deployed as a stand-alone system or as an integrated system (with SAP ERP, SAP Supplier Relationship Management [SRM], or SAP Master Data Governance [MDG]) depending on your business requirement. To avoid configuration and operational bottlenecks, you need to put the participating systems in the landscape into proper shape by performing appropriate initial and basic technical settings.

SAP Supplier Lifecycle Management sits on the SAP NetWeaver ABAP stack as the underlying technical platform. The software component, SRMSMC (the component name for Supplier Lifecycle Management), is typically installed as an add-on for the SAP NetWeaver ABAP system.

Following the successful installation of the necessary software components on the participating systems in the SAP Supplier Lifecycle Management-based SAP system landscape, it is imperative to perform specific technical activities to ensure that users can use the system productively for transaction processing. Most of the standard activities performed as part of the standard post installation tasks in SAP NetWeaver ABAP are applicable to SAP Supplier Lifecycle Management. However, there are specific settings that are peculiar to SAP Supplier Lifecycle Management that I discuss.

A typical SAP Supplier Lifecycle Management System landscape is made up of the following main systems:

Regarding deployment options, you can choose to operate SAP Supplier Lifecycle Management as a stand-alone system or as an integrated system with (SAP ERP, SAP SRM, or SAP MDG). For a stand-alone deployment, the Supplier Lifecycle Management server component is installed in isolation without any interaction with back-end systems. When the integrated deployment approach is adopted, a specific SLC plug-in software component has to be installed on the back-end systems. You need to establish a connection to the SLC server via the appropriate communication technologies (Remote Function Call [RFC], point-to-point communication via Web Services Reliable Messaging Protocol, or SAP NetWeaver Process Integration).

Note
In this article, I focus on the stand-alone deployment option based on SAP Supplier Lifecycle Management 1.0 Support Package 05.

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Kehinde Eseyin

Kehinde Eseyin is a security architect. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science. He has about 12 years of IT security, governance framework, IS risk, and compliance experience gained by working in numerous global organizations. Over the years, he has demonstrated competencies in security design, information assurance, cyber security, data privacy, threat and vulnerability management, penetration testing, business architecture, project management, IT audit, IS controls framework, and identity and access management.